One black night mother and I sat alone in the dim starlight, in front of
our wigwam. We were facing the river, as we talked about the shrinking
limits of the village. She told me about the poverty-stricken white
settlers, who lived in caves dug in the long ravines of the high hills
across the river.
A whole tribe of broad-footed white beggars had rushed hither to make
claims on those wild lands. Even as she was telling this I spied a small
glimmering light in the bluffs.
"That is a white man's lodge where you see the burning fire," she said.
Then, a short distance from it, only a little lower than the first, was
another light. As I became accustomed to the night, I saw more and more
twinkling lights, here and there, scattered all along the wide black
margin of the river.
Still looking toward the distant firelight, my mother continued: "My
daughter, beware of the paleface. It was the cruel paleface who caused
the death of your sister and your uncle, my brave brother. It is this
same paleface who offers in one palm the holy papers, and with the
other gives a holy baptism of firewater. He is the hypocrite who reads
with one eye, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and with the other gloats upon the
sufferings of the Indian race." Then suddenly discovering a new fire in
the bluffs, she exclaimed, "Well, well, my daughter, there is the light
of another white rascal!"
She sprang to her feet, and, standing firm beside her wigwam, she sent a
curse upon those who sat around the hated white man's light. Raising her
right arm forcibly into line with her eye, she threw her whole might
into her doubled fist as she shot it vehemently at the strangers. Long
she held her outstretched fingers toward the settler's lodge, as if an
invisible power passed from them to the evil at which she aimed.